Conclusion

-RADEON 9800 XT 256MB

Yes, Exair's Radeon 9800 XT is definitely the best card from the other series we tested. Unfortunately it can not be found less than $390 (320 euro) remaining unaffordable for the mid-user. Despite the release of the next generation VGA cards (X800 and 6800), the price of the R9800 XT is still high. We expect this to change since ATI's X800 chipset will are to substitute the R9800 ones.

Of course this card is referred to the power user who have no problem giving something more to have a top notch VGA card in his system. Also some good overclocking speeds were achieved resulting to even better performance and higher fps.

- RADEON 9800 PRO ULTIMATE ATLANTIS 128MB

If the silent operation is an important factor to you in purchasing a video card, but you are not disposed to compromise much performance, then Sapphire's Radeon 9800 PRO Ultimate represents at the moment the ideal VGA card for you.

As for the performance, using the Pro GPU, is not as good as the R9800 XT. We mentioned before that the Ultimate version differentiates from the Pro for its heatsink solution. An other minor difference from the plain Pro model is that the Ultimate version is underclocked at 680 Mhz memory from the 700 Mhz the Pro model is.

Keep in mind though that if you wish to overclock this card you will definitely need an efficiently ventilated cooling case. Though we recommend not to overclock the card, since you won't experience any big difference on its performance. If you like playing with fire and overclocking is your life then this card it's not for you. But if you are a movie fan or someone who spend many hours in front of his PC and finds the fan noise irritating then Sapphire's Ultimate series are just for you.

There is a 256 MB version of this card available on the market. The prices of both 128 and 256MB models are over $420 (344 euro).

- GEFORCE FX 5900 XT 128MB

Exair's FX 5900 card is definitely a good affordable product for everyone. Although it didn't catch up with the ATI chipsets we tested, it managed though to keep a quite acceptable fps record. We found the card with less than $190 (156 euro), and that makes it a very affordable product.

Overclockers might not be very satisfied with Exair's FX 5900XT after we managed to overclock the card only 50Mhz more for the core and 20 more for memory. Keep in mind that the XT versions are lighter than the normal GeForce FX 5900. This is not the case with ATI's XT series since Radeon XT cards are a lot better than its non-XT models. So use discrimination when shopping video cards.

- ASUS V9950 FX 5900 GE 128MB

We expected much from the Asus FX5900 Gamer's Edition, but unfortunately it didn't meet our expectations. According to the game benchmarks, it seems that the GE series performs like the XT versions. Having this in mind this card is for the gamer who wants a fair solution for his system. But to be fair, although FX 5900 GE didn't perform as good as the ATI video cards, it showed satisfying fps at the medium resolutions. The strong points of this card is that its ships with an incredible software and game bundle at the affordable price the XT version has.

An other strong point of the card is its high overclocking capabilities. As you saw V9950 FX 5900 GE was successfully overclockable at 475Mhz for its core! This is truly a very good core clock speed and resulted in a noticeable performance increase. In our opinion it should be named Overclocker edition than Gamer edition...